Only by Chance. Betty Neels
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stopped as she realised that the bitterness in her voice was telling Cal a little too much about the state of her marriage. ‘The point is that I haven’t been able to spend the last three years learning about Wilparilla,’ she told him. ‘Even after I came back, I had my hands full with the twins. They were only just two when Hugo was killed last year. Looking after two toddlers doesn’t leave you much time to learn how to run a cattle station.
‘Everything’s so far away out here,’ she sighed. ‘It takes so long to get anywhere. There’s no toddler group when it takes two hours to get to the nearest town, and no handy babysitter when your neighbours live eighty miles away. I haven’t even had the time to make the most basic of social contacts.’ The blue eyes were defensive as she looked back at Cal. ‘I had no choice but to rely on the manager Hugo had appointed.’
Cal’s mouth turned disapprovingly down at the corners. ‘Judging by what I’ve seen so far, he wasn’t much of a manager,’ he said.
‘I know,’ snapped Juliet. ‘I’ve got eyes. I only see a tiny fraction of the property, but even that looks run down. But I couldn’t do anything about it when Hugo was alive, and when he died…’ She trailed off. How could she explain what a terrible financial and emotional mess Hugo had left behind him? ‘Well, it wasn’t a very good year,’ she went on after a moment. ‘It was all I could do just to keep things as they were.’
It was the first time Cal had thought what it might have been like for Juliet since her husband’s death, and he was conscious of a stirring of shame that he had never considered the matter from her point of view. It couldn’t have been easy for her, isolated, and far from home, bringing up two small children alone.
She could have sold, though, he reminded himself. He had offered a good price for the station. She could have gone back to England a rich woman and made things easy on herself, but she hadn’t. She had chosen the hard way.
‘I’ll go and have a word with the men now,’ he said, exasperated by the momentary sympathy he had felt for Juliet. ‘They’re going to start work tomorrow, and they’d better be ready for it.’
‘Should I come and introduce you?’ Juliet asked doubtfully
‘There’s no need for that,’ said Cal, a grim look about his mouth as he thought about the men who had let his property fall into disrepair. ‘I’ll introduce myself.’
He didn’t say anything about Natalie, so when he had gone Juliet gave her something to eat with the boys. She could hardly leave the child just sitting there, and judging by the way Natalie gobbled it all up she was starving. Afterwards, Natalie helped her wash up, drying each plate with painstaking care.
‘You’re very well trained, Natalie!’ said Juliet, keeping a wary eye on a glass.
‘Dad always makes me do chores,’ Natalie admitted with something of a sigh. ‘I have to dry up and sweep the floor and tidy my bedroom every day.’
‘Oh? Is he very strict?’
‘Sometimes,’ said Natalie. ‘And sometimes he’s funny. We do good things together.’
Hugo had never wanted to do anything with his sons. ‘Does he look after you all by himself?’ asked Juliet, uneasily aware that she shouldn’t be pumping the child, but, given Cal’s uncooperative attitude, it seemed to be the only way she would ever find out anything about him.
‘Most of the time,’ said Natalie, untroubled by any fine sense of ethics. ‘We used to have housekeepers, but they all fell in love with Dad so we don’t have them any more. Dad doesn’t like it when they do that.’
‘I can imagine,’ said Juliet dryly. All those housekeepers must have been brave women to fall in love with a man like Cal Jamieson. He wasn’t exactly encouraging. But perhaps he had smiled at them…
She pulled herself up short. Was that why Cal was so hostile? she wondered. Was he afraid she was going to be tiresome and fall in love with him as well? Juliet felt quite ruffled at the very idea. She had no intention of falling in love again, least of all with a man who patently disliked her and was one of her employees to boot! Love had hurt too much the first time round. Juliet had learnt the hard way how fragile her heart was, and she wasn’t going to let it be broken again.
Natalie helped her bathe the twins and put them to bed, and then, when there was still no sign of Cal, Juliet let her choose where she would like to sleep. Puzzled, she watched as Natalie looked in every room, as if expecting to find something. ‘Why not have this room next to the twins?’ she suggested, when Natalie only looked disappointed. She pointed at the door opposite. ‘Dad can sleep across the hall there.’
‘OK.’
Juliet made up the bed, and helped her unpack her suitcase. Natalie took out a framed photograph of Cal and a pretty blonde girl holding a toddler on her knee. ‘That’s Dad, and that’s me when I was a baby, and that’s Mum,’ she said, showing Juliet the picture.
‘She was very pretty, wasn’t she?’ said Juliet, and, when Natalie nodded, added gently, ‘Do you miss her?’
Natalie considered. ‘I don’t remember her very well,’ she said honestly. ‘But Dad says she was very nice so I think I do.’
She could only have been three when her mother had died—the same age as the twins. Poor Natalie, thought Juliet. Poor Cal.
She wondered again about him as she made up the bed. She didn’t know what to make of him. He had seemed so taciturn and hostile at first, but he was so different when he played with the children, and Natalie had made him sound like a different man again. It was odd, Juliet thought idly, how clearly she could picture him already, almost as if she had always known those cool, quiet eyes and that cool, cool mouth.
Smoothing down the bottom sheet, Juliet found herself imagining him lying there, lean and brown and tautly muscled. Her palm tingled, as if she were running her hand over his skin instead, and she swallowed. When Natalie cried ‘Dad!’ she spun round as if she had been caught in the act itself.
‘Dad, look, we’re making a bed for you!’
‘So I see,’ said Cal, but his grey eyes rested on Juliet’s flushed face, and he raised one eyebrow at her guilty expression. She was sure that he could see exactly what she had been thinking about.
‘We…I just thought…since you weren’t here…’ Juliet realised that she was floundering and forced herself to stop. This was her house and she had a perfect right to be here. She didn’t have to explain anything to anyone, least of all to Cal, who was (a) her employee, and (b) late.
‘It’s very kind of you,’ said Cal coldly, ‘but there was no need. I’ll finish it off.’
Juliet felt dismissed. ‘I’ve…er, I wasn’t sure what you wanted to do about eating, but I’ve made supper if you’d like to eat later,’ she said awkwardly.
‘Thank you.’
He didn’t say ‘you may go’, but that was what it felt like. He stepped out of the doorway and Juliet sidled past him and slunk back down to the kitchen. Behind her, she could hear Natalie excitedly telling him about Kit’s bedtime story, and how Andrew had splashed in the bath, and she felt a great wash of loneliness sweep through her. She had no one to tell about her day. How long was it since she had had anyone to talk to in the evenings?
A long time.
She had hoped that she would have been able to make some friends amongst her neighbours after Hugo had died, but everyone lived so far away, and she soon discovered that he had left her a legacy of distrust and disapproval. On the few occasions she had made the laborious journey to the nearest town, her attempts to be friendly had been met with politeness but no warmth, and she had been too tired and depressed to persevere. Rebuffed, she had retreated into herself, and relied on letters and phone calls to friends in England for support instead. She had told herself that she wasn’t lonely as long as she had the twins, but she had been.
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